(rants and observations on outsider culture, music & cinema in The Big Wet)

Saturday, December 20, 2008

An Alienated Christmas in Vancouver

Four fun shows for those of you with an interest in unusual music: at 7:30 PM, Solder and Sons will feature Set Sail to Sea, Burrow Owl, and the Italian Husbands - an ambitiously large gig for such a cozy space. I've already written about this below - check it out.

If you go directly to 1067 after the show, there's a special event there that will also delight, A Very Heartwarmongering Christmas, a project the details of which are a little vague to me; Fond of Tigers' Stephen Lyons will be involved, and I'm promised "a secret cameo appearance by the Sorrow and the Pity performing a cover of a Christmas song by an ostensibly socially-minded superband named after an adhesive bandage," which is enough to make me brave the moldy old couches. (The Sorrow and the Pity's Myspace is queerly hard to find, not turning up in my searches, but it's here no less. They DO have a CD out now, by the way - what other stocking stuffer will equally please Minutemen and Albert Ayler fans, I ask you? My past interview with their ranter/drummer Dave Chokroun, is here, and a fun read indeed).

No, that's not Mats Gustafsson, it's Darren H. Williams of The Sorrow and the Pity, by Femke van Delft

Gig three is at the Railway and I wish I had a gig poster for it! The Frank Frink Five play The Railway Club; it will be my first opportunity to see them, as I've managed to miss every other gig they've done. In fact, I only know the names of three fifths of them (assuming there are, in fact, five members): Nick Jones of the Pointed Sticks, former Modernettes member and bluegrass mandolinist Randy Carpenter (who appears not to have a Myspace), and drummer extrodinaire Jon Card. Oh, do check out the Pointed Sticks' free Christmas downloads, if you haven't!

I do confess, delightful as the fact of the Sticks' new output may be, that these songs are a tad cheery for me. What with treestumps lining Granville Street, homeless women burning themselves to death as a remedy for our cold spell, and the dread that comes in knowing that we're only a year away from the Olympics, and nowhere near prepared for it - I'm in a bit of a grumpy mood and more inclined to watch one of those horror movies where Santa's got an axe. If I'm going to hear a large number of Christmas-themed songs sung by anyone this year, it's gonna be No Fun frontman and Chapters Magazine Guy, David M. I've been an attendee of his free Saturday afternoon Chapters shows on repeated occasions, which, since I'm at best one of five people in the audience and, more usually, one of one, can be quite intimate (David even let me hold his Gorgo once - starfuck your way above THAT, geek!). Hey, wait - is this the third Saturday in December?

Wow! It IS! Unless something has gone weird, there's a free David M. concert at Chapter's today! 1PM to 3PM! What an amazing coincidence! Check out David M's Ironic Acronym's toe-tappin' "Baby Jesus Drank My Blood" for free here, if you remain unconvinced. Then come say hi to me and David on the 3rd floor of Chapters - these one-to-one artist/performance ratios get stressful - you can't slouch on applause when you're three feet away from the singer and you're the only one there!

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About Me

Writer, aging punk, cinephile. Fan of the obscure and outside. ESL teacher, occasional used bookstore guy; zombie when the mood strikes me. Haven't been based in Vancouver for awhile now but "Alienated In The Metrotown Area" is an even worse blogname than I already have. And I still have ties to Maple Ridge (sigh).